War and peace challenge for web awards

The Webbys are the online Oscars and, with the US army, the peace corps, Catholicism and Islam all in the running, the winners could tell us something about the state of the nation, writes Duncan Campbell

War and peace challenge for web awards

The Webbys are the online Oscars and, with the US army, the peace corps, Catholicism and Islam all in the running, the winners could tell us something about the state of the nation, writes Duncan Campbell

Tuesday 30 April 2002 04.41 EDT
First published on Tuesday 30 April 2002 04.41 EDT

The Vatican is taking on Islam and the peace corps will be battling against the US army. But there will be no blood on the walls whoever wins because they are only competing in the annual Webby awards, the nominations for which were announced this week.

The Webbys are the Oscars of the internet. Now in their sixth year, they will be awarded by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) at a ceremony in San Francisco in June.

They have a special place in the hearts of reporters who have to cover awards ceremonies because they limit all winners to a maximum of five words in their acceptance speeches. Thus we are spared the tearful thanks to agents, mums, Gods and lawyers that plague most such events.

The awards also give an indication of the state of health of the dotcom world. Last year, in the wake of the collapse of the industry, some of the winners had already gone bust by the time they reached the stage to pick up their prizes. "Bankruptcy never felt so good," was, as I recall, one of the acceptance speeches.

The Academy is not yet such a grand organisation as their film industry equivalent although there are a few overlapping members. The 350-person IADAS includes Francis Ford Coppola, Bjork, Matt Groening and David Bowie amongst their members but the ceremonies so far have not taken themselves too seriously. So what can be divined from this year's nominations?

There are now 500 million people online so, although some of those who rushed into dotcomland have fallen off the cliff edge over the last 18 months, there are enough healthy survivors to fill the nominations lists. There were a record number of entries for the 30 different categories with applications arriving from 36 different countries.

Anyone who sees the nominations and awards as an indicator of world trends, may like to note that nominated for the Best Practices award along with the fairly predictable Google.com, which won last year, and Amazon.com are US army basic training and peace corps.

Will we be able to tell in which direction the country is going by the choice of winner in this category? Will a victory for one be a sign of national belligerence or for the other an indication of a desire to win hearts and minds in a peaceful way?

Equally, will we be able to tell whether the Catholic church has survived its battering over its shifty behaviour in the cases of paedophile priests in the US if it beats Islamic Studies and takes the Religion prize?

The BBC features in a number of categories but the nominations are dominated by US-based outfits. One major issue concerns the Humour category in which satirewire.com and heartless-bitches.com are competing. Since American newspapers don't use the F word, who will ever know if one of the finalists, fuckedcompany.com, has triumphed?